Landmark Decision in the Diebold Case

Yesterday, a California court issued a decisive victory for a group of pro-active students, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and defenders of fair use everywhere. The case centered on cease-and-desist letters sent by Diebold Corporation to block bloggers and online news sites from posting Diebold’s leaked email archives about its e-voting machines (backstory available here). Diebold, the nation's leader maker of electronic voting machines, claimed that the archives was copyright protected and, just like a pirated song, should be removed from the web. But the court didn't buy it: "No reasonable copyright holder could have believed that the portions of the email archive... were protected by copyright," the decision said. "It is hard to imagine a subject the discussion of which could be more in the public interest." Read more about the victory from the EFF, Derek Slater, a Berkman affiliate who received one such C&D letter from Diebold, and Executive Director John Palfrey.